


Voice & Body

by TheColorBlue



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 10:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil’s chief defining attributes were in the qualities of his voice. Literally. Looking at Cecil directly was like being temporarily struck by face-blindness.</p><p>-Now two stories, loosely organized as being together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carlos

Cecil’s chief defining attributes were in the qualities of his voice. Literally. Looking at Cecil directly was like being temporarily struck by face-blindness, in which all you could really say about this individual was that he had the features generally associated with a face: a nose and mouth and two eyes, maybe three, on the odd day, and that would be about as far as one could go with that. The first time that Carlos looked at Cecil—it was disconcerting, a bit. Carlos had to look away for a moment, look at someone else, one of the interns, maybe, to get his bearings, and then he’d tried to look back at Cecil. He’d squinted, a little. He’d tried to be inconspicuous. Carlos, as a scientist, valued the use of his eyes. There were so many things you could tell, ought to have been able to tell, about an object simply by observing its physical qualities, and the changes in aforementioned object over time and in varying conditions. 

Sometimes, looking at Cecil, Carlos could tell that Cecil was smiling, but it was hard to tell if it was in the looking, or the listening, in the quality of Cecil’s voice. It was like looking at Cecil and seeing a Cheshire cat’s smile—the gesture of the mouth unattached to the other attributes of a face, or even a body.

Sometimes, Carlos wondered if Cecil unconsciously combated these projections of face-blindness through his wardrobe and other modifications to his physical appearance. He had a very specific wardrobe he wore to the radio station. He had particular sets of vests and sweater-vests that he wore over his button-up shirts, and those little brightly patterned ties. He had the tattoos that swirled and crawled up his arms and wound round his neck, like the flitter inside a snow globe. 

Oh, and then there was his casual dress. 

On their first date, there was that tunic he wore, over those awful furry pants. 

Carlos knew, instantly, looking at this person, that it was Cecil, so the wardrobe had done its job, he supposed, and anyway, he had no room for talking, going to a date in a lab-coat… in his defense, that had been mostly on account of it being the only clean coat he had at the time… 

But, yes. Without these personal markers of clothing and body art, looking at Cecil would have been like looking at…someone. In a queer way, you would realize that you were never quite sure who you were looking at, really. Being a fellow with no definable features in the face, it was maybe interesting that he fixated so much on Carlos’ alleged heights of physical beauty. Maybe. Carlos wouldn’t have considered himself the looker anyway, but maybe it was a study in contrasts that Cecil was so enamored with. 

…Getting to know Cecil wasn’t so much looking at his face, anyway, but listening to his voice. Cecil created shapes with the sound. He created vibration and texture. He created body, and not body in the sense of something that you could look at, but something that resonated in your chest. You could feel it in your bones. It made you want to reach out and touch the instrument that created the sound, like laying your hand against the side of a guitar, tapping and hearing the echo inside its belly. 

When they sat inside the car, after their first date, and there was that rattle of the engine running, and Cecil had gone quiet—in that instance of silence, between one phrase of conversation and the next, Carlos turned and looked at Cecil’s face and in that moment it could have been anyone. The eyes and nose and mouth in their indefinable attributelessness could have belonged to anyone. There was a vacant feeling.

Carlos felt himself wanting to reach out. 

It was like looking at a guitar without any distinguishing marks. It was like looking at the sort of extraordinary instrument that you would have _known_ as uniquely itself if only you could hear the sound. 

With the rattle of the car, and the groans of the wind and the shadow people outside, Carlos reached out, and then he was kissing Cecil gently on the mouth. 

At the touch, there was a soft intake of breath. 

Even in that hushed moment, it was like hearing something so precise. So certain. So unique. 

Carlos closed his eyes briefly, carrying that sound. 

And then he pulled away.


	2. Cecil

Cecil loves the way that wild things and small children love: with energy, and vigor, and perhaps a mildly disturbed variation on innocence. He lives in a terrible world where people are mauled and disappeared and surveilled by secret police and malevolent beings on a daily basis. There is not a lot that Carlos could do to make Cecil stop calling him perfect, and beautiful. 

Perfect, _beautiful_ Carlos. 

As a scientist, Carlos might have contested the use of the word perfect. And using what perimeters and standards could one even use the word perfect, anyway? Even those things which are perfectly symmetrical are only perfect in regards to the value placed on the measurements of their molecules as spatially perceived. In any case, no organic beings live in perfect symmetry. 

… Cecil wouldn’t have any idea what Carlos is talking about. 

_Perfect_ is the sound of Cecil’s joy when his eyes light upon the planes of Carlos’s countenance. 

_Beautiful_ is an expression of the peculiar feeling that wells up inside, and.

There is not a lot about Night Vale that is beautiful and not also somehow tinged with horror or the macabre—which is not to say that these elements are not lovely, but they do not allow Cecil to relax. 

Cecil has never been relaxed in the presence of another being, not even himself, and it is possible that he had never appreciated the magnitude and constancy of that tension until he met Carlos. 

Carlos with his strong jaw and his rows of strong teeth and his love of science, and the persistence with which he attempted to help the community of Night Vale, through science.

\--- 

…. Admittedly, Carlos, in fact, is not perfect. 

Carlos has many fine qualities.

Carlos has no understanding or appreciation for basic architecture, and also he insists on the existence of mountains. 

Carlos is not perfect by mathematical or scientific measurements, but he is _perfect_ like the sound of the word, the texture of the syllables. He is perfect like a variation on the rhythms of the radio’s daily Weather Reports, a rhythm and quality that Cecil expresses simply by opening his mouth and saying it, _perfect and beautiful, in face and form_. 

\---

When Cecil looks at his face in a mirror, he does not see much in the way of worth noting. 

Literally. 

He has never been able to make out the planes of his face the way he can make out the perfect planes of Carlos’s strong and delicate-skinned face. 

Of course, when Cecil runs a hand through his hair, he knows that it is long, and dark, long enough to sit on and long enough to get caught in doors, which is only embarrassing if perfect Carlos is watching. When he looks at his hands, he sees brown skin and the errant trickle of a tattoo snaking round a finger, then back up past his knuckles, like caught in the current of blood circulating beneath the skin. 

But Cecil cannot see any distinguishing features in his face, even running his hands over them, feeling for nose and mouth and three eyes. 

He worries, sometimes, that Carlos—beautiful Carlos—will not have much to look at, so he ransacks his closet for their first date. He picks out his best tunic, which is blue and spangled, and his best furry pants, which are soft when he runs his hands over the texture of them, and soothing. 

When his clothes are beautiful, he feels beautiful. 

When he and Carlos set out for their first date together, he knows that they will be perfect, and beautiful, the culmination of each other’s dreams. He whispers the words to himself as he pulls up to the lab, seeing Carlos come out the front door. He wants to feel the body of the words, the delicate precision of the sounds wrapping him up in the blanket of them, even as he watches Carlos approaching, and feels his own heart stutter in his chest. 

Carlos is all of these sounds, wound tightly together and murmured like on radio: 

_perfect, lovely,_ and _beautiful._


End file.
